Working on creating better, more beautiful places to live in.
Brooklyn, NY
Joined September 2018
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It's a hopeful work about our ability to create places today that are as good as have ever existed. Our best days are not behind us. All it takes is a little bit of Optimism to get started!
Check out the link on Amazon below!!
shorturl.at/2sOW0
Coby retweeted
Avant 2021 / Après 2026 Place Saint-Gervais, Paris Centre. En 2025, un jardin commémorant les attentats de Novembre 2015 a remplacé l'ancien parking. Notez qu'il est rare de trouver une vieille photo d'un lieu si peu remarquable à l'époque (source Chabe01 sur Wikimedia Commons)
A sign of everything wrong in NYC housing.
Fraud in homeless services has been a shameful status quo in New York & San Francisco for many years. It’s a solvable problem, as Denver & Houston show, but even more enraging when the our AGs are complicit taking funds from those they’re meant to investigate.
“Embattled New York Attorney General Letitia James failed to probe three of the Big Apple’s most scandal-scarred homeless shelter operators — while accepting more than $56,000 in campaign donations from their top executives, lobbyists and spouses over the past eight years, records show.”
These are precisely the kinds of abuses the attorney general is supposed to investigate. Yet while other watchdog agencies have exposed serious misconduct, Letitia James has refused to hold these operators accountable. The fact that individuals tied to these organizations have contributed thousands of dollars to her campaigns raises serious questions about whose interests she is protecting.
Coby retweeted
wild ruling out of Seattle that @PHLCouncil needs to read. a builder put $39M into 254 low-income apartments locked at 60% AMI for 30 years. from 2015 to 2018 it worked, collecting ~94% of rent.
then Seattle stacked on "tenant protections": banned criminal background checks, banned winter evictions, required 180 days notice for rent hikes + 3 months relocation pay, and forced the owner to let unscreened roommates move in and take over leases.
result: rent collections dropped from 93.9% to 44.1%!!! the building lost nearly $6M through 2023 ($2.7M in 2023 alone) and is now appraised as functionally worthless. the city bankrupted actual affordable housing lol.
the appeals court just ruled the owner can sue Seattle for an unconstitutional taking. when you strip a landlord's right to screen, collect rent or remove non-paying tenants, it's not "regulation" anymore, you took the building…. Philly has half these laws already 🙄 courts.wa.gov/opinions/pdf/8…
Coby retweeted
I think the thing that kills me the most about towns/cities permitting departments…is they make ‘doing it the right way’ so unbelievably difficult sometimes.
Example: I am trying to install new digital menu boards. Simply replacing the old static ones for new digital ones.
Town:
-oh we need to run all new light pollution studies then
-oh we’re gonna check all your parking lot lights while we’re at it
-oh we need to double check this doesn’t hinder a ladder truck from driving over your building
-oh we need to inspect the footers before you pour any concrete
-no you absolutely can not assign the permit to a new certified vendor doing the identical work
-how many seats did you say were in the dining room? Might need to add a sprinkler system
-we need to bring in the signage department now too because digital menu boards are now considered signage
-are you bricking up the base of the footers? It’s not required by code, but we’re requiring it 🤗
Could have just done the whole thing in an afternoon & never heard a peep.
Now this project is on month 13, with 4 different permit offices involved, 3 engineers, and no end in sight
Coby retweeted
If you truly *love* American cities, you MUST support strict enforcement of laws against anti-social behavior. Paying bus fares, red light cameras, camping on sidewalks, smoking on trains, off-leash dogs, etc etc
If people want to do whatever they want, that’s FINE in the suburbs or the country on your own land. But it, fundamentally, cannot work in our densest places where people all have to co-operate in proximity.
If we do not, it means cities will continue to be primarily for those able to avoid the annoyances ... the wealthy and/or child-free.
If we don’t change this … in 40 years we will look back on allowing dogs in downtowns the same way we look at cars:
As a terrible mistake for how it molded dense urban environment for the benefit of a few ... by not properly pricing in public costs of the "free rider" dog owners and by changing the entire culture to accommodate them.
My fear is by then (like with cars today) there will be too many ppl accustomed to the private benefits and impunity of living downtown with their dogs so we're only able to make marginal changes
And that negative downstream effects (fewer kids, playgrounds, dirty sidewalks, dog attacks) will be baked in
American transit is not serious, even in the “best” region for it in the country.
No trains from just after 4 o’clock, despite there being hundreds of people commuting back from a big event that just ended, but they cluster 4 trains in 9 minutes an hour later.
I love cities. I love books. I love lists of books.
To honor these loves, I've made a list of my favorite books about cities, design, and development. Some favorites below!
To see the full list, check out the article below!
What am I missing? What should I add to my to-read-list?
buildingoptimism.substack.co…
No booklist on cities would be complete without Building Optimism, of course.
If you've not already read it, I can assure you with full impartiality, it scores very high on these sorts of lists!
amazon.com/dp/B0DJV2WLXR?lv=…
The Upper West Side represents, to me, the peak of America. Of our confidence, gloriously embodied in homes & then towers whose aesthetic peaks are without peers. I’m always inspired here.
Sadly, it also shows the loss of that confidence, of forlorn blocks and barren facades.
